Franklin Roosevelt Administration:
Statement on Termination of Diplomatic Relations with
the Vichy Government

(November 9, 1942)

The representative of this Government at Vichy has reported that last
evening M. Laval, Chief of the Government at Vichy, notified him that
diplomatic relations between Vichy and this Government had been severed.
I regret this action on the part of M. Laval.

He is evidently still speaking the language prescribed by Hitler.

The Government of the United States can do nothing about this severance
of relations on the part of the Vichy Government.

Nevertheless, no act of Hitler, or of any of his puppets, can sever
relations between the American people and the people o France. We have
not broken relations with the French. We never will.

This Government will continue as heretofore to devote its thought,
its sympathy and its aid to the rescue of the forty-five million people
of France from enslavement and from a permanent loss of their liberties
and free institutions.